Why Our Words Aren’t “Just Words”
In law school, I once found myself in a debate with someone who was certain words don’t really matter. His position was simple: we should be able to curse freely, and no one should be offended as long as the vulgar language isn’t aimed directly at another person. At the time, I knew I disagreed, but I struggled to explain why. Now I can see more clearly that the heart of the issue isn’t about being “uptight” or “chill.” It is about what we think a human person is worth—and whether our speech reflects that.
We already understand this in other areas of life. When you dress up for a job interview or a funeral, you’re not just following a dress code; you’re saying, “This matters. You matter.” The clothes are for you and for the person you’re meeting. Our speech works the same way. Clean, thoughtful language is a way of dressing our words appropriately for the people in front of us. It says, “You’re worth my self-control. You’re worth my effort.” Vulgar, lazy speech—even when it’s not directed at anyone—sends the opposite message: my impulses come first; the atmosphere we share and the dignity of those around me come second. My Nana used to put it more bluntly: people who curse a lot have poor vocabulary. It was her way of saying, “You can do better than that. Reach for better words.”
This is why “it’s just words” is never quite true. Words don’t only transmit information; they shape the moral climate of the room. The way we talk in a space either raises or lowers the baseline of what feels normal. If I fill the air with coarse language, I’m not just expressing myself; I’m dragging the shared standard down and asking everyone else to live there with me. Even if I insist, “I don’t mean anything by it,” my habits are still teaching my heart—and everyone else’s—that nothing, including the people listening, is important enough to protect from ugliness.
You can see this in some old-fashioned instincts that are actually healthier than we realize. Men often feel a natural check about being vulgar around women or children. Is it always perfectly lived? Of course not. But the instinct itself is telling: there is a sense that beauty, innocence, and femininity call for a higher standard of speech. There is a desire—however buried—to preserve something, to keep certain spaces and certain people from unnecessary coarseness. That’s not prudishness; it’s half-remembered respect for dignity. When we blow past that instinct and insist on being just as crude as we’d like, what we’re really saying is, “Your presence doesn’t change how I behave. You’re not worth an adjustment.”
From a Catholic perspective, this is not just social etiquette; it flows from what we believe about the human person. Each person is made in the image and likeness of God and has a dignity that does not come from usefulness, status, or temperament. Our words can either echo that truth or quietly deny it. When we speak with reverence, we are acting as if the person in front of us really is an icon of God, someone before whom we should tread carefully. When we fill our speech with vulgarity and contempt, we treat that same person as background noise, as if nothing about them really calls for reverence. In that sense, guarding our language is one small but real way of living out the Church’s insistence that every human person is “someone,” never “something.”
None of this means we have to speak in formal prose all the time or that every strong word is automatically wrong. There is a place for bluntness, a place for righteous anger, a place for calling evil by its name. But if we care about the dignity of the person, then we have to admit that our everyday speech is not morally neutral. The way we talk is one of the ordinary ways we either honor or chip away at that dignity—in ourselves and in the people who have to share space with us.
So when someone says, “Words don’t really matter,” I’d say this: words are how we clothe our thoughts before we hand them to another person. Just as we don’t wear ripped pajamas to a wedding, we shouldn’t assume that throwing verbal garbage around is harmless simply because no one can prove we “meant” anything by it. Our speech is part of how we protect beauty, signal respect, and live out the truth that every person we’re talking near or talking to is more than an audience for our venting. They are someone whose God-given dignity is worth guarding—even from our own tongues.
